Thursday, April 21, 2005

It is today sometimes as difficult to get an energy company insider to talk about oil and gas supplies as it was to get tobacco company executives to talk about the shenanigans that went on behind their doors. So unique and astonishing was the event when a lone tobacco executive went to the press anonymously that it was made into the movie known as The Insider (which I highly recommend).

As for oil and gas production company insiders, they are not so much involved in shenanigans as they are reluctant to admit that theirs is an industry with a highly uncertain and probably waning future. Now, thanks to the diligent efforts of the Unplanning Journal, a blog by an anonymous natural resource planner for a county in central California, we have one willing to talk.

For weeks, as part of the planner's job, he had been seeking an energy executive who would give him the straight dope on natural gas supplies in North America. Projections for those supplies are crucial to knowing how much electricity his county can count on in the future since almost all new power plants are now gas-fired. The picture painted by the anonymous executive is not promising. He predicts that the situation will continue to be touch-and-go in the next few years in North America. He believes that imported Liquid Natural Gas will help alleviate shortages, but at a great cost, and he is worried because new LNG terminals are moving ahead at a snail's pace. He believes the U. S. Energy Information Administration projections for natural gas supplies in North America are wildly optimistic, manipulated for political reasons, and not consistent with what he's seeing on the ground. Click on the link above. It's a must read all the way through.